If album artwork is missing then now is a good time to add it. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be any remotely similar app for Macs. ![]() For example, I have an action that allows me to copy the year tag and force it into the iTunes release date field, something which cannot normally be edited within iTunes. You can create some neat macros in mp3Tag that allow you to transform one tag or part of one tag into another. Finally, I go through each track and ensure the title and remix is correctly labelled according to my preferences. I then look at the extended tags and clear or delete some of them such as the genre and comments unless I see some useful information in them that I want to keep or relocate. I tend to select whole releases and start by editing the release (album) title, the year (release date) and artist for all tracks in that release at once. When setting this up, you can store frequently used naming conventions and completely remove existing tags from “dirty” files if desired. The best tool I’ve found for editing tags in the tracks is mp3Tag because it works on so many different formats, is quick, and is good for both beginners and more advanced users. If you’re using a different application to manage your library then the same principle applies. This way you can edit the metadata outside of iTunes if you prefer, relocate where you’d like it to be stored in your own folder structure and then import it back into iTunes. For DJs and those who like to keep control of their music, it is recommended to not “Keep iTunes Media folder organised” or “Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library” in the advanced preferences of iTunes. If downloading from the iTunes store, the tracks will automatically be added to your library. This is where all my editing takes place. Whether purchasing direct from the iTunes store or some other online store such as Juno, Beatport or AudioJelly, the first thing I do is move the location of the digital files to my editing folder, aptly called “AV Editing”, if they are not saved their in the first place. (By the way, I have a PC-based system and use iTunes and Traktor, both which of course are fairly popular library / DJ applications.) Remember this is just one way of doing it, but hopefully it’ll illustrate some concepts for you. To give you an idea of how this workflow might work, I’ll share my personal method for getting my tracks processed before I start to use them. In addition, many people like to perform additional processing on their music downloads before they are actually imported into their library. ![]() What next? We’ve already seen that in most cases the information embedded in the files by your music store is either incorrect or inconsistent, so you cannot rely on it. So you’re shopping for music, you’ve listened to a few tracks and have decided to purchase a cart of a dozen or so digital downloads. So how do we edit the metadata and ensure our libraries have the right information in today’s digital environment? From download to deck-load… Sleeve artwork became the quickest way to identify records, and although it is still valuable to have this for digital tracks the primary way we now search is through text-based tags that we are creating or editing. ![]() Each week you’d sift through what you played before and decide which tracks should remain for the next gig and which new records you would add. Many would have piles of records and CDs ordered by purchase date, artist or popularity. When preparing for a DJ gig, you’d be restricted to 100 to 200 or so records to choose from. Ultimately, the important thing is to do what works for you!īefore digital music became so prolific, collectors and DJs would create personalised and often abstract ways of grouping, ordering and sorting their record collection. My last stage of music library organisation is choosing the right tools and workflow to go from “download to deck-load”, which is what we’re going to look at today.īefore we get going, I’d like to stress once again that these are guidelines and not rules: They’re here to help empower youself to make your own choices. In An Essential Guide To Organising Your Music Library (which was part four of this occasional series looking at ways of better organising your DJ music collection), we considered how we might like to classify the tracks and tags. Mp3Tag for Windows is a powerful utility to let you perform all kinds of bulk actions on your musics’ tags.
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